


Disguises

by alittlebriton



Category: Alias (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:44:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4485299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlebriton/pseuds/alittlebriton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some masks go too deep to rip away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Disguises

Irina remembers rolling her ‘r’s and letting her voice go up a note at the ends of sentences. The accent had taken nearly two years to master, and she hated every second. She listened to bootleg tapes of speeches given by presidents and celebrities, and watched avidly when Khasineau smuggled in reels of films starring women who were not born blond. Sitting in a small room, watching the images flickers on a dirty sheet, she inhaled his smoke and American idioms equally. Irina had masked her accent and taken on another’s, some girl from Pennsylvania, intellectual and intent on teaching.

Strange, how she had never questioned Khasineau’s choosing of Jack over any other agent. She had seen a picture, read a file, but had never seen any of the alternatives. She had simply agreed, signed her name, and started the mental training to stop herself from believing the lie. Anything for the motherland, she had said when Khasineau asked. She’s only starting to understand why he replied that she should be careful for what she wishes.

It had been her first flight, changing airplanes in Austria. She had stepped off the plane with wobbly legs and a wide smile, every inch the grad student exploring new areas of Europe with next-to-no money. The customs officials had waved her in with only a cursory glance at her passport, and Irina wondered why Khasineau had bothered to pay so much for it. She hid her amazement at the heat and the bright shininess of Los Angeles, and when it peeped through she masked it as the usual small-town-girl awe. She hadn’t known whether to be grateful or sad for the lack of snow.

She had followed Jack everyday, and waited for a downpour before she made her move. She laughingly ran into the café where he was sitting, shaking the rain from her hair and wringing out her blouse. She had looked around in search of a seat, and although plenty of boys had made gestures to the empty places in front on them, she instead wound her way through the tables before stopping at Jack’s. He had looked up from his book, still frowning, and then raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t that hard to draw him into conversation when she was wearing a shirt that was plastered to her skin: Jack was still just a man, after all. She thought of him as her mark that first meeting, and then afterward only as Jack, as she played through the façade. She found that switching her names for him: the target, Jack, her boyfriend, her husband, was easy if she never changed her feelings. It got harder towards the end.

It wasn’t that difficult, keeping up the appearance of a dutiful wife whenever Jack was looking, filtering what intel she could back to Russia when he wasn’t. Then she would drop her smiling face and mask herself with the blood of other men. It got harder the more he let Arvin into his life; the man was constantly suspicious. And it got harder once Sydney was born. She hadn’t meant to get pregnant, no matter how many times Khasineau had told her to, she had just been lax in her birth control. She thought about getting rid of it, but whenever she looked at Jack she couldn’t, and later on she tricked herself into believing she had Sydney for Russia. Not for a man who wouldn’t stop believing in her, no matter what the evidence told him. Not for a man who never once questioned why Arvin kept turning up at odd hours of the day.

And when she left, she was so tempted to take Sydney with her, to teach her the proper ways of the world, but she consoled herself that she would at least have one child to teach. The lies we tell ourselves are harder to disregard than the ones told to us by those we trust. They took Nadia as they had taken her at 16, erased her life and made a mockery of her future.

Now she knows it was the best thing she could have done for Sydney, to let her grow up in the shadow of a mistrustful father. It taught her hardship and a self-reliance that she would never have been able to pass on to her daughter alone. She wonders if Jack knows this and still blames her for leaving him. She wonders why she still cares.

She speaks in her real accent now, softened by years of disuse. If Jack minds it, he never lets on. He doesn’t blink when she moans his name in her own voice, and she doesn’t dare to slip back into the drawl she had once perfected. She thinks maybe, just maybe, he prefers her to Laura. Neither are real, but with her disguise gone, he cannot blind himself with trust. Jack always liked to not trust someone, he said he liked to know where he stood. If you think everyone is double-crossing you, then you have a good idea about your place in this firmament. She doesn’t know whether to be happy or sad about that. She doesn’t know if she believes him.

So she goes back to rolling her ‘r’s in her head and watching him dress, and speaks with her own voice, never says what is in her heart. Some masks go too deep to rip away.


End file.
